For many teenagers completing their school education this week, the next few years of their lives could not play out more differently to those who finished about 100 years ago.

Members of Brisbane Grammar School’s (BGS) 2018 first rugby XV will graduate and many will head to university, while their counterparts of 1911 had 15 members serve in World War I — very soon after leaving school.

Four of them lost their lives and many returned as changed men.

From school to soldiers

Sydney Ford, Francis Bridgman, Norman Whitaker and Eric Doyle put their all into their sporting prowess at BGS.

From rowing, cricket, rugby, athletics and even shooting, the young men left it all out on the field.